Tag: crowdfunding

Two men interested in technology have started to solve the problems of the courier service, both on the part of the customer, who until now had to wait for the courier with the ordered goods at home, and of the couriers who were having trouble with people who are not at home to receive the parcel. The solution is the ParcelSea smart mailbox, which allows you to use parcel and food courier service in a contact and communication-free manner. The idea received a special prize of 5,000 euros from Samsung in the autumn round of Prototron 2020.

Everything originated from the men’s own experience and concern when it was necessary to wait at home for a courier for goods ordered online. “By mapping the problem, we realized that the couriers are also concerned – often, when the courier arrives, people are not at home to receive the parcel. Of course, we initially had more questions than answers: where to start, what resources do we need, what is our value proposition? We realized that we needed to start with the materials and tools we had, and we built the first concept out of cardboard boxes, glue, bolts, and nuts and finished with spray paint. The first result greatly boosted our confidence. The second prototype was already made of finer materials and techniques, and we were very satisfied with the result,” said Andres Sampka, one of the authors of the idea.

Crazy development

From then on, everything progressed at a crazy pace. In October 2020, the men filed a design patent; in November, the first two prototypes were successfully tested on both electronics and hardware. The first MVP product was ready for Christmas; on January 20, smart mailboxes were installed for test customers in Tallinn, Viimsi, and Pärnu, and the production of smart mailboxes started.

In addition to the founders Andres and Indrek Jürgenson, who covered skills starting from IT & hardware development, strategic thinking, and operations management, the ParselSea team was joined by Tanel Raun, an expert in logistics who has a thorough knowledge of the courier world and top engineer Timo Tolmusk, who makes sure that the entire product development process runs on its right tracks.

The smart mailbox is working

“We are now sure that the smart mailbox works in different weather conditions, and it is time to focus on real use cases. We started asking beta testers and couriers for feedback so that the smart mailboxes produced by April would already take into account different situations, parcel sizes, and everything we can’t predict today. At the same time, we will introduce our product to courier companies so that by April 2021, everyone will know what a smart mailbox is and how to deliver different packages there,” said Andres, and added that cooperation with Omniva, DPD, COOP, Selver, Prisma, DHL, UPS & others is already going on.

We applied at Prototron with the expectation of gaining additional momentum from the startup landscape experts through practical advice and homework. It was also interesting to see how other startups, who are more or less in the same stage. For example, Product Market Fit and One-pager Homeworks were particularly good, directing us to organize previous analyzes of the market, goals, and value proposition. The whole structure of the program was logical, and I see that it will be of great benefit to those who have not been in the field for a long time. At the same time, there are many former leaders on our team, but when making a new startup, you can often get confused and different opinions about priorities may arise. Thanks to the advice received at Prototron, we put together a good enough pitchdeck to make presentations to investors before the finals.
– Andres Sampka, founder of ParcelSea

This year’s first round of Prototron, Estonia’s first smart ideas fund, is over. A total of 70,000 euros was shared between five teams in the spring round. Ideas like a new generation alarm button, automated road surface marking robot and solar park analytics solution were judged worthy of funding.

According to Jana Budkovskaja, CEO of Prototron, innovation is an important keyword in the ideas that received funding in this round. “This is precisely in the point that people are often so used to existing solutions and as if in a comfort zone that they don’t know what better to want. In most cases, however, innovation will most likely be better, faster or more efficient, and if we don’t think about it before, we definitely will after personal contact or need, ” she explained, adding that with Prototron ‘s support, the teams are now starting to develop solutions that break many existing patterns of action.

The beneficiaries of Prototron’s 2020 spring round funding are:

– The 10Lines team received 25,000 euros and is starting to develop a robot that can mark and paint pavements at the same time. Til this day, it has been a process that requires significant human and time resources that a robot can easily substitute and perform.

– With a 10,000 euro funding, the Abbuco team will set out to develop a solar park analytics solution that collects and analyzes information from parks set up by different manufacturers to maximize its benefits.

– LifePatch is a new generation marine alarm button based on NB-IoT (narrow band internet of things) that sends an SOS call to the cloud system. This helps to find the person in distress at sea much faster and better, because the positioning of the alarm signal with the help of the cloud system is much more accurate than before. The team received funding of 10,000 euros.

– A Funding of € 20,000 euros was provided to the Magnalysis team, which is developing a solution to make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cheaper and more user-friendly. The solution helps to bring the information of MRI examinations into cloud technology, so that it would be available to doctors everywhere, and artificial intelligence would be able to analyze the results of the examinations and assist in preliminary diagnosis. All in all, the solution would make the work of doctors much easier.

– The Milo Appliances team received 5,000 euros to develop a so-called smart kitchen surface with a magnetic motor. Instead of having several separate appliances in each kitchen, such as a blender, food processor, mixer, etc., there is one smart countertop and compatible containers.

The most successful of the campaigns carried out on the co-financing platform Fundwise was AG Vibez, who is developing sound choreography clothing that helps, for example, the deaf to perceive music through the vibrations of sound. The team raised 905 euros with the campaign, a total of 29 teams raised 7,423 euros.

Prototron was founded in 2012 by Swedbank, TalTech and Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol, in 2020 the University of Tartu became another major partner and the fund expanded to Latvia. By now, Prototron has financed 79 smart ideas with a total of nearly 965,000 euros, and the teams have raised more than 28 million euros in follow-on investments.

In addition to the founders, the city of Tallinn, BuildIt Latvia, Samsung, Hedman Lift, Fundwise, Veebimajutus.ee, LMT, Amazon Web Services and BASIS ID offer mentoring and support services to the teams.

This years second round will start in November. Applications can be submitted until November 15th at www.prototron.ee.

On May 17th on the main Estonian startup conference Latitude59 we announced the winners of Prototron springround at the main-stage of Latitude59. 4 teams got 60 000 € to turn their ideas into reality.

The biggest grant – 25 000€ was given to Lumebot – a self-driving snow removal robots are more than 10x cheaper to make than snow plows. This allows each parking lot to have a dedicated snow removal robot(s). Through continuous work, it is able to keep the parking lot clean 24/7. Autonomous snow removal robots that start working as soon as it starts snowing.

10 000€ was worth the idea of Futuclass – an educational virtual reality game that brings awesome science experiences to classrooms. A game where players solve interesting and fun pre-made science puzzles and learn by doing. Science experiments in VR are cheap, safe and easily accessible. Like Rakett69, but in VR.

Team Unsinkable Robotics got 20 000 to build an underwater robot that could perform several tasks underwater without an operator. The robots reduce the need for divers to perform dangerous and time consuming tasks such as mine detection.

Kibu.energy wants to empower the inhabitants of the smart city in the usage of renewable energy by offering a foldable solar panel that can be deployed in balconies, terraces or gardens. It integrates storage and can be plugged in directly to a wall socket.

Autumnround is less than 5 months from now. Get inspired and apply before October 15th.

In the second round of Prototron in 2018 the Expert Committee decided to give out funds worth of 62 500 euros. In addition teams were able to gather additional funds on the Fundwise platform.

In total almost 300 ideas were submitted out of which 5 reached a successful funding.

• Pillirookõrs, which is making straws out of reed is already a brand well-known for a conscious consumer. In addition to a straw they’re now developing a material based on reed to develop alternative single-use plates or cups based on reed. They were supported with 20 000 EUR.
• Vetik is working on a marine algae based natural and healthy red colorant to substitute current unhealthy ones used in the cosmetics industry. They were supported also with 20 000 EUR.
• Decomer Technology received 7500 EUR from Prototron, in order to develop a novel water-soluble packaging material suitable for food and other industries.
• Captain Corrosion is developing handheld corrosion management device and providing corrosion-related consultations. Funding received: 7500 EUR.
• Questcity is developing an VR-augmented professional platform for designing and completing interactive quest-excursions. Funding received: 7500 EUR.

The winners will be awarded with a six-month free incubation space at Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol and legal assistance from Hedman Partners and an opportunity to use the Mektory labs and the premises of the Tallinn University of Technology. Veebimajutus awarded winners with 6 months of free web hosting and e-mail services together with know-how on website development.
For the first time the the winners were consulted by the team of Fundwise – how, when and for what can crowdfunding be used. In addition they had a chance to experience it first hand and collect additional funds.

Prototron fund is put together by Swedbank Estonia, TalTech, Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol and tallinn city. Next round of Prototron opens in January. You can submit your ideas via our web until 15th of March 2019.

Few days after the announcement of TOP40 teams, they gathered to Mektory for some useful tips and knowhow about all the relevant subjects for startups – crowdfunding, intellectual property protection, how to validate product/service, what to keep in mind making a webpage and how Swedbank and Science Park Tehnopol can help the teams.

Starting this round all Prototron winners get 6 months web hosting and e-mail service for free from Veebimajutus.ee, plus all their know-how, how to make a really good web page. How, why and what, Marko Toom from Veebimajutus.ee made it all clear.

Software development

Taavet Tamm from Singelton said, they are following a simple narrative: software is about
making machines work for humans. It is important to understand, do You need custom software for Your business and figuring out what and how to build based on business needs and goals.
Five steps to working software:
1) Understand your user flow
2) Prototype & create user stories
3) Get the estimates for budgeting
4) Prioritise & decide
5) Build.

Finances

The core message of Vahur Vallistu from Swedbank was – there has never ever been more money for startups on the market, as there is right now. Use it!
Jelena Žovnikova from Fundwise gave a closer look how crowdfunding works for tech startups.

Startup community

Triin Ilves from Tehnopol gave inspiring overview of Estonian startup scene in numbers.
550 startups, 4300 new jobs created, startups paid €35M in employment taxes year 2017, raised over €880M in the last 10 years. Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol helps startups and growing companies by providing modern business and science environment. Tehnopol Startup Incubator invests up to 10 000€ worth of expertise to a start-up company in one year to attract seed round investment or reach the export markets.

IP questions

Intellectual property, investment contracts and other legal issues is the work-field of Toomas Seppel from Hedman Lift. He spoke about, what is intellectual property in terms of startups. It´s copyright, trademark, industrial design, inventions (patent, utility model) but also a trade secrets. How to protect your idea and work in early stages etc.

Thank you, Vahur Vallistu from Swedbank Eestis, Marko Toom from Veebimajutus.ee, Taavet Tamm from Singleton, Toomas Seppel from Law Firm Hedman Partners, Yelena Žovnikova from Fundwise and Triin Ilves from Tehnopol!

This round we have even more support services for our winning teams. What we have to offer besides up to 35 000€ equity free funding for prototyping, incubation at Startup incubator, R&D mentoring from TalTECH and legal aid form Hedman, training for pitching and media-communication and priceless investor contacts.

All Prototron winners get 6 months web hosting and e-mail service for free from Veebimajutus.ee, plus all their know-how, how to make a really good web page. Winners get mentoring and special price from Fundwise team, how, when and for what to use a joint funding.

Swedbank Estonia, Tallinn University of Technology TalTech, Tallinn Science park Tehnopol and Tallinn city put out 62 500€ in total! Extra funding up to 10 00€ can be provided by Elering for energy BigData projects and Utilitas for projects in environmental technology. Estonian healthtech cluster Connected Health has decided to give a special prize for health connected ideas. The prize includes a 1-year full membership of the cluster to grow your business and develop your idea.

Apply now prototron.ee, deadline is October 15th.